Evans planning January swoops for new faces

John Lomas

New Mansfield Town manager Steve Evans is already talking to some big clubs about the availability of players as he prepares for swoops in the January transfer window.

Evans saw his side lose for the first time under his management last weekend, crashing 5-2 which sent opponents Carlisle United top.

He has told his current squad they need to prove they are worth keeping over the next six weeks but said he already has plans to strengthen some departments.

“It is out job to do our homework,” said Evans.

“We were out last night, both Paul Raynor (assistant manager) and myself, at separate matches.

“Our scouting staff have been out over the last week or so and we will continue to work diligently.

“I have had conversations with a Championship boss today and one in the Premier League about possibilities with players.

“We are going to monitor them as well. Gone are the days when you can look at players over a game or two.

“It is different if they are experienced Football League players and you’ve seen them many times.

“Especially the younger generation, if you’ve looked at them a game or two maybe you know enough. But we have this wonderful six or seven week opportunity to look at them and have different people look at them and make sure we are all saying yes.”

He continued: “I think there are certain areas that we will definitely strengthen and others where we are saying ‘come on lads show us the reason not to’.

“As Mr Radford, the chairman, and Carolyn, the chief exec, have said to me, there are resources there.

“But hopefully we’ll be able to control that and make sure we’re doing it when it’s justified and needed and not doing it for the sake of doing it.

“We said to the players when we came in that we would assess them over November and December. It’s a very fair period to be able to work with 19/20 players and ascertain who is going to be good enough.

“There will be two categories for us, which is quite simple. I am using the great Sir Alex Ferguson’s words which are yes they are good enough to go forward or no, they are not.

“As a management team you have to look at the maybes and the maybes are not good enough because there’s doubts.

“Not just the players, we all have six or seven weeks now to make an impression that we should be going forward and try to take the Radford family towards, as a minimum, the play-offs and League One.”

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